Eating vegan, running long distances and being 20-something.

6/11/18: Vegan Food Tour of George Town, Penang

I went out for my long run at 7 and felt pretty decent most of the way. It was hot and I was tired, but I wasn’t dying.

I had breakfast at the hostel, Ryokan Muntri Boutique Hostel, with Amanda plus a German girl who asked to sit with us. She was fine at first, but then wouldn’t stop talking about Trump and politics so that got a bit annoying by the end.

Amanda and I walked around George Town. The town has a real European feel with its brightly colored doors and colonial architecture. There was so much good food everywhere, we decided to make today a foodie day.

We walked over to the area with street art and saw a bubble tea truck. I got roasted tea with grass jelly. So good, especially on a hot day. Then we saw a small shop selling kaya toast (kaya is a coconut jam), so we got that as a snack. It was my first time trying kaya— it kind of tasted like caramel. We ran into a large Asian cafeteria, where Amanda got white nutmeg juice.

After a lot of walking around and taking photos, we went to a vegetarian pick-and-choose place called Ee Beng. We were the only foreigners there, which was nice. I hate when you go to a restaurant and it’s all just a bunch of white tourists.

My massive plate

We went back to our hostel and researched good cafes in the area. I really needed to catch up on the blog.

We chose Mugshot, a little coffeeshop down the street. We ordered iced soy lattes (yay they had soy milk!) and sat down.

OMG these soy lattes were delicious! Super creamy…I hadn’t had that good a latte in forever.

Around 5 we went to Love Lane, a street known for its bars, for happy hour.

We walked around a bit, trying to decide which one to go into. This proved difficult. There were a bunch of people trying to get us into their bar so we couldn’t just idly walk around and decide on our own. Eventually we walked a bit farther down the road to a quieter area and found a bar called Casablanca Cafe doing 2-for-1 cocktails.

We sat in the chairs outside and ordered our drinks— caipirinha for me, gin fizz for Amanda.

We chatted for a couple hours. We still weren’t hungry by 7, so we decided to walk around for a bit. We tried to look for a place selling ice kacang (shaved ice) to eat after dinner. We found one in Chinatown, bookmarked it, and then headed over to Little India. I was finally getting hungry!

So much corn

We sat down at Woodlands, a vegetarian Indian place. We were convinced that the staff were plagued by the bystander effect; nobody was coming over to give us menus or take our order, and I think it’s because they figured that given the amount of servers around, someone else would do it.

The tea came with milk… ugh. What kind of ginger tea comes with milk??!

The dosa was really amazing. The texture of the bread was nice, and the potato filling really hit the spot. It also came with coconut & mint chutney, but it was a bit hard to dip the dosa into it— the chutney kept sliding around everywhere and didn’t get on the actual bread.

Sassy Amanda

The curry, which we asked to be spicy, was indeed super spicy. It was good, but I almost died. My head was buzzing by the end. But I somehow enjoyed the sensation?? Like a good kind of pain. I think spicy food is seriously addicting.

After dinner, we found a ice kacang stall around the corner so we didn’t have to walk all the way back to Chinatown.

When the lady was finished making it, we realized she had sprinkled peanuts all over the top. I told her I couldn’t eat peanuts, and she said she could make a new one for us. I felt bad making her do it all over again, but there was no way I could have eaten that. The peanuts weren’t just on the top, they were falling into all the little crevices.

The second ice kacang came with red beans, sweet corn, grass jelly, syrup, and nutmeg. It had a strong licorice-y flavor, I think from one of the syrups she used. Amanda thought it tasted more like root beer.

Bellies full and happy, we walked back to get ready for the next day— we would be waking up super early to catch a bus to Thailand.